Bob Vander Plaats

There are certain prerequisites for presidential candidates competing in Iowa: Greet voters in the Pizza Ranch restaurants that dot the state. Recruit volunteers to make your case on a bitterly cold night when the caucuses are held. And meet with Bob Vander Plaats. Vander Plaats, 48, is an influential leader among Iowa's social conservatives and evangelicals, a key voting bloc that can deliver a victory in the first voting contest in the nation. He was the state chairman of Mike Huckabee's ragtag 2008 campaign, which surprised many with its first-place finish here.

After months of campaigning and a revolving cast of Republican front-runners, the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday night will provide the first voter verdict of the 2012 presidential contest. President Obama's victory on the Democratic side is a foregone conclusion. His campaign is already on the scene in Iowa, a battleground state in the fall. And without a challenger for the nomination, Obama has the luxury of focusing on what is shaping up as a tough general election. Not so for the seven candidates for the GOP nomination.

The Family Leader, a leading group of conservatives hoping to play kingmaker in the Iowa caucuses, announced Tuesday that it had narrowed its endorsement choice to four of the Republican presidential hopefuls: Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. For any of those four, the group's endorsement before the nation's leadoff nominating contest could be a significant boost, given the outsized role religious and social conservatives have in the Hawkeye State. Also notable, the organization's board said it never considered Mitt Romney, long among the national front-runners for the GOP nomination.

Rick Santorum's supporters eyed the TV screen, watched the returns roll in - and they still couldn't quite believe it. “This is beyond my wildest dreams, “ exclaimed Matt Schultz, Iowa's secretary of state, who endorsed Santorum just a month ago. With about half of Iowa's precincts reporting, Santorum was in a dead heat with Mitt Romney, with Ron Paul slightly behind. A matter of weeks ago, the former Pennsylvania senator appeared dead in the water, on course to finish near the bottom of the field.

The Republican presidential candidates most actively courting Iowa voters are set to speak Saturday afternoon at a gathering of social conservatives, one of the biggest cattle calls remaining before the Jan. 3 caucuses. Saturday's Thanksgiving Family Forum is organized by a leading Iowa conservative, Bob Vander Plaats, and his group, the Family Leader. The format is meant to mimic the holiday dinner, with six candidates -- Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum -- gathered around a table participating in a discussion moderated by Frank Luntz.

Presidential contender Tim Pawlenty declined Wednesday to sign a highly criticized marriage-themed pledge sponsored by an Iowa Christian activist group, while at the same time praising the aims of the document. The pledge, a four-page commitment drafted by former Iowa gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats and his group The Family Leader, promotes traditional male-female marriage and reproduction and strongly condemns same-sex marriage, abortion rights, divorce, Sharia law, pornography, and women serving in forward combat roles in the military.

Mitt Romney has claimed a narrow lead over Ron Paul in Iowa, according to a new CNN/Time poll. But it is Rick Santorum who may be showing the most momentum with just days left before the caucuses. Much of the movement is driven by a collapse in support for Newt Gingrich. He led the previous CNN survey in Iowa with 33% support, well ahead of Romney at 20% and Paul at 17%. The new results put Romney ahead of Paul 25% to 22%, with Santorum now at 16% -- a jump from just 5% earlier this month.

Iowa's Republican governor sent a warning to Mitt Romney on Wednesday: Don't write off the Hawkeye State. Terry Branstad, a former four-term governor who returned to office this year, said at a forum hosted by Politico that the GOP front-runner is "making a big mistake" by favoring other states to his. "I mean, Romney is dropping in the polls and I think he thinks that he wants to keep down expectations, you know. Well, his expectations may get really bad if he doesn't get a little more serious," Branstad said, according to Politico . "I know Romney is putting his focus in New Hampshire, but if he gets clobbered here - if he comes in not in the top three but say fourth or fifth - I think that really damages his campaign on the national [level]

Rick Santorum's supporters eyed the TV screen, watched the returns roll in - and they still couldn't quite believe it. “This is beyond my wildest dreams, “ exclaimed Matt Schultz, Iowa's secretary of state, who endorsed Santorum just a month ago. With about half of Iowa's precincts reporting, Santorum was in a dead heat with Mitt Romney, with Ron Paul slightly behind. A matter of weeks ago, the former Pennsylvania senator appeared dead in the water, on course to finish near the bottom of the field.

The Family Leader, an influential political organization among the religious voters who dominate the Iowa caucuses, is not endorsing a candidate in the presidential contest, but two prominent evangelical leaders backed Rick Santorum on Tuesday. Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the Family Leader, and Chuck Hurley, the president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, said they were backing the former Pennsylvania senator because of his deep anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage views that are grounded in his faith, and because he believes the nation's economic woes are rooted in the breakdown of the family.

For Rick Santorum, it was the paparazzi moment that looked like it would never come. Cameras and correspondents awaited him Thursday at an event in eastern Iowa in numbers that had rarely, if ever, been seen by his campaign. Even the presidential candidate seemed a bit taken aback. "Enjoying the circus?" one reporter asked. "This is the first day," Santorum replied. Nobody has worked harder or spent more time traveling Iowa's rural highways and visiting its hamlets than Santorum — and until this week, no one had less to show for it. But with polls indicating that Santorum is rising in the minds of voters likely to attend next week's caucuses, there's a growing sense that if any candidate is going to leverage Iowa's wide swath of evangelicals, it will be the former Pennsylvania senator.

Mitt Romney has claimed a narrow lead over Ron Paul in Iowa, according to a new CNN/Time poll. But it is Rick Santorum who may be showing the most momentum with just days left before the caucuses. Much of the movement is driven by a collapse in support for Newt Gingrich. He led the previous CNN survey in Iowa with 33% support, well ahead of Romney at 20% and Paul at 17%. The new results put Romney ahead of Paul 25% to 22%, with Santorum now at 16% -- a jump from just 5% earlier this month.

It was a ringing non-endorsement on a surprisingly slow news day here, considering the first votes of the 2012 presidential cycle are to be cast in a week. Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, the only candidate in the state today, went pheasant hunting with Iowa U.S. Rep. Steve King, an evangelical conservative. The former Pennsylvania senator killed some black pheasant and quail but failed to bag the endorsement of the influential Republican leader. In the late afternoon, they emerged from a convoy of trucks to face a cluster of reporters looking for something, anything that would constitute news, and offered, basically, nothing.

The Family Leader, an influential political organization among the religious voters who dominate the Iowa caucuses, is not endorsing a candidate in the presidential contest, but two prominent evangelical leaders backed Rick Santorum on Tuesday. Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the Family Leader, and Chuck Hurley, the president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, said they were backing the former Pennsylvania senator because of his deep anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage views that are grounded in his faith, and because he believes the nation's economic woes are rooted in the breakdown of the family.

  Herman Cain's latest presidential campaign implosion has put some of the Republican Party's most active voters in a distinctly uncomfortable position: deciding whether to abandon an accused adulterer to side with an admitted adulterer. Even before Monday's allegation by an Atlanta businesswoman that she and Cain had a 13-year affair, the GOP contest was moving toward a two-man race between steady front-runner Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the latest candidate to catch the fancy of the anti-Romney forces.

The Family Leader, a leading group of conservatives hoping to play kingmaker in the Iowa caucuses, announced Tuesday that it had narrowed its endorsement choice to four of the Republican presidential hopefuls: Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. For any of those four, the group's endorsement before the nation's leadoff nominating contest could be a significant boost, given the outsized role religious and social conservatives have in the Hawkeye State. Also notable, the organization's board said it never considered Mitt Romney, long among the national front-runners for the GOP nomination.

It was a ringing non-endorsement on a surprisingly slow news day here, considering the first votes of the 2012 presidential cycle are to be cast in a week. Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, the only candidate in the state today, went pheasant hunting with Iowa U.S. Rep. Steve King, an evangelical conservative. The former Pennsylvania senator killed some black pheasant and quail but failed to bag the endorsement of the influential Republican leader. In the late afternoon, they emerged from a convoy of trucks to face a cluster of reporters looking for something, anything that would constitute news, and offered, basically, nothing.

The Republican presidential candidates most actively courting Iowa voters are set to speak Saturday afternoon at a gathering of social conservatives, one of the biggest cattle calls remaining before the Jan. 3 caucuses. Saturday's Thanksgiving Family Forum is organized by a leading Iowa conservative, Bob Vander Plaats, and his group, the Family Leader. The format is meant to mimic the holiday dinner, with six candidates -- Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum -- gathered around a table participating in a discussion moderated by Frank Luntz.